VP Engineering - Software

Appear is a market‑leading supplier of media‑processing and delivery technology. Its platforms enable production companies, telcos and broadcasters to create immersive live experiences. The new VP Engineering, Software will head the software side of the development organisation, overseeing roughly 25 engineers spread across Oslo and Stockholm and steering the VX media‑processing platform together with the XM/Hub control layer. In this role you will define and own the technical and organisational strategy for VX and XM/Hub, aligning it with the company's three‑to‑five‑year growth plan. You will shape the architecture roadmap, pushing the shift toward cloud‑native, service‑oriented and AI‑enhanced designs, and make final architectural decisions after weighing trade‑offs presented by architects. Delivery responsibility includes ensuring predictable, high‑quality output across multiple workstreams, establishing metrics that surface velocity, quality and risk, and embedding the target operating model alongside the VP Development Operations & Transformation. You will also build and grow a distributed organisation, assess its current structure, create the needed management layer, and develop engineering managers and team leads into an autonomous, delivery‑focused middle tier. The position requires a documented record of technical leadership in software engineering for broadcast, live production or closely related real‑time, mission‑critical domains such as video/audio processing, compression, orchestration or graphics. You must have proven experience scaling and managing distributed software teams of 25 + members across several sites and product lines, and a history of instituting predictable, high‑quality delivery practices using agile or lean methods at scale. Strong collaboration skills are essential, with the ability to partner effectively with UX, product management, engineering and architecture peers. Practical experience applying AI tools and agentic workflows to software development processes is also mandatory. A commercial mindset that links engineering choices to cost, margin and customer impact is expected. The role sits at the intersection of software and hardware engineering, working closely with the VP Engineering, X Platform, who leads FPGA, embedded software and contribution‑encoding hardware. You will have direct access to the CPTO and executive sponsorship, giving you real influence over the software domain's evolution for the next three to five years. The position is fully distributed across Oslo and Stockholm, offering the chance to lead a geographically diverse team while maintaining close ties to product, architecture and customer needs. Cross‑functional partnership extends to M&A and partnership integration, where you will represent software engineering in strategic planning. What the role asks for: - Documented technical leadership in broadcast/live‑production software - Experience leading distributed software teams of 25+ engineers - Proven ability to establish predictable, high‑quality delivery at scale - Strong collaboration with UX, product, engineering and architecture peers - Practical experience using AI tools in development workflows - Commercial mindset linking engineering decisions to cost and margin - Nice‑to‑have: Experience partnering on M&A and partnership integration initiatives